Kelley Leadership

The excitement of the Super Bowl is great and I am looking forward to joining the crowds downtown.

I have been impressed with the many ways that faculty have planned classes to overcome the difficulty of traffic and ensure the continuation of student learning.

During the Super Bowl classes in the Kelley School are not being held on Friday (Feb 3) and classes will not be held on Monday from 7 am to 4:30 pm. Faculty were still allowed to have classes on Monday evening. Similarly on Thursday evening. However, many faculty are using the Super Bowl as a test for our continuity plan. Our continuity plan considers how to continue even if campus would need to close.

Several faculty are using Adobe Connect (Breeze). This is a software program where I can have students join me in a virtual setting online. Students can view exactly what is on the faculty members computer or the faculty member themselves, much like Skype or Go-to-Meeting. Students can use a chat room to ask questions of the faculty member. Or in a smaller class setting, the faculty member has the option to turn the microphone over to the student to interact through a video dialogue.

Other faculty members have used Presenter, which permits a faculty member to record their voice and overlay it with a video of the PowerPoint presentation that they have on their computer. This allows a video production of a lecture to be presented. I like the use of Camtasia for my class. With Camtasia, I can record anything on the computer screen. So it allows me to record information that I might review not only from PowerPoint, but also from Excel and the internet. As a finance professor, I find Excel is a great tool for analyzing data and the internet has loads of financial data that can be used in the Finance MBA classes or the Finance Undergraduate classes I teach.

Another faculty member is requiring students to watch the movie Beer Wars. It is a 120 minute movie about the beer industry and the competition in the industry. The following class period, students will discuss the different strategies of the competitors and use the movie as the foundation for a case.

Other faculty have included readings for the day and assignments or group projects that can be done outside of the classroom.

The ingenuity of faculty to continue despite a campus shutdown and the technology available today is fantastic. It makes me proud to be part of the Kelley School of Business where our faculty have the confidence and expertise to teach in multiple contexts.

Enjoy the Super Bowl!